Medical prescription

A medical prescription (℞) is a written order by a medical doctor to a pharmacist for a treatment to be provided to the doctor's patient.

Future directions of prescriptions

As a prescription is nothing more than information among a doctor, pharmacist and patient, information technology can be applied to it. Existing information technology is adequate to print out prescriptions. Medical information systems in some hospitals do away with prescriptions within the hospital. There are proposals to securely transmit the prescription from the doctor to the pharmacist using smartcards and the internethttp://www.computer.org/proceedings/hicss/1435/volume6/14350156babs.htm. In the UK a project called the Electonic Transfer of Presctions (ETP) within the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) is currently piloting such a scheme between doctors and pharmacies.

Related Topics:
Medical information system - Smartcard - ETP - NPfIT

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Within computerized pharmacies, the information on the piece of paper that is the prescription is captured immediately. Thereafter, the prescription is simply an entry within the pharmacy's information system and the paper prescription is stored for legal reasons only.

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In cases where a pharmacy is part of a chain of pharmacies, the pharmacies are often linked together through their corporate headquarters with computer technology. Walgreens, for example, uses satellite technology to share patient information. A person who has a prescription filled at one Walgreens can get a refill of that prescription at any other store in the chain, as well as have their information available for new prescriptions at any Walgreens.

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Some pharmacies also offer services to customers over the internet. Walgreens' web site, for example, allows customers to order refills for medicine over the internet, and allows them to specify the store that they will pick up the medicine from. Their web site also allows consumers to lookup their prescription history, and to print it out.

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Pharmacy information systems are a potential source of valuable information for pharmaceutical companies as it contains information about doctor's prescribing habits. Prescription data mining of such data is a developing, specialized fieldhttp://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/100/201/300/cdn_medical_association/cmaj/vol-163/issue-9/1146.htm.

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